Reports

I have to say it’s the wonderful time for studying and living in Zurich. Through this exchange program I experienced a lot, such as different culture, advanced teaching methods, excellent sights, and the most important part—lovely people. The people here are always willing to help me no matter when I encountered troubles in the school or got lost on the road. Furthermore, the University of Zurich is a very good place where you can seek both for knowledge and for friends. Overall, I've enjoyed here much more than my expectation.

Preparation

I’m really appreciated that the International Relations Office did lots of helpful works for our preparation. There is a lot of useful information about transportation, accommodation, insurance, courses selecting etc., had already clearly delivered to me before I came here. And the best thing was to help us to apply the student visa, I think it’s very helpful and more distinctive than other school.

Arrival

Before I arrived here, I afraided I would met some troubles because totally didn’t understand German. However, ESN and the Economics Faculty respectively assigned mentor and buddy to me. They picked my friends and me up at the airport and showed us around the University and even the Zurich. Furthermore, through the orientation and other activities organized by university, I also realised the cultural differences and made some new friends just in the beginning of this semester.

Accomodation

I live in a newly built student hostel for international students supplied by WOKO. Although it is a little far from the University, it could easily reach there by tram. The hostel is pretty new and well-equipped, so I think the rent is quite reasonable for living in Zurich. I really enjoyed living with so many friends from all over the world in this hostel.

University

The study life here is really interesting and impressive. I enrolled the master program of Banking and Financial management and took six courses relative to this field. Since I’m a MBA student, and our courses usually focused on pragmatic way in my home university. Then I prefer choosing some academic courses to extend my studying fields, such as “Market Microstructure“, “Empirical Financial economics“, “Advanced Asset Pricing“, there are all technically-oriented and need to study very hard for me to catch on. The other lectures I took due to my interests are “Microfinance“ and “Intercultural management“, both courses are interesting and the professors are very nice. The last course I took was “European Sport Economics“, which is totally new to me but learned lots of models and concepts on it.

Life/Leisure

What I can say is that Zurich is definitely the most fabulous city in the world, which combines prosperous and tranquil perfectly in the same place. Living here is convenient and enjoyable. Besides, I gained a lot by communicating with friends from every part around the world, and by traveling to many cities in Europe. And it is also a strength living in Switzerland, which located in the center of whole Europe. So we can take advantage of this merit to visit many popular cities just during the shorter leisure time. All in all, life in Zurich is a wonderful experience to get closer to different culture and understand the world better.